Journalist, entrepreneur and marketing firm founder. I write about higher ed and early career issues. Pithily. I was pontificating about Millennials and Millennial culture back when they were still known as Gen Y.

Careers Are Dead. Welcome To Your Low-Wage, Temp Work Future

Finally, some statistics to prove the stereotypes right. According to a recent survey from Millennial Branding and Payscale, Millenials really are most likely to be employed in service industry jobs. So, all those jokes about post-graduation latte pouring and t-shirt folding haven’t been in vain. And while it might be comforting to think of these jobs as necessary way stations on the path to an upwardly mobile future – especially if you’re someone who holds one – there’s mounting evidence that the American labor market may never return to its pre-recession composition. The future is already here and it brings with it low-wage temporary or contract work as a way of life.

“Employers remain hesitant to add permanent employees due to uncertainty about the current strength of the economy and future economic conditions, including impending tax increases and spending cuts expected to take effect in January 2013. In times like these, businesses are being much more strategic in sourcing additional talent and maintaining work force flexibility.”

And this cautious approach to staffing and reliance on a disposable workforce may continue for years. While there are certainly highly-skilled and in-demand professionals who are able to parlay their hired-gun status into big paydays or renaissance workers who are mashing up day jobs and dream jobs, those who benefit financially from the gig economy are in the minority. With low-wage occupations set to keep growing – even in economic hotspots such as Silicon Valley – most young workers may be destined to either cycle through a number of temporary positions in search of better wages and working conditions or resign themselves to juggling multiple low-wage jobs in order to support themselves if they aren’t able to find an entry point to the career track before they age out of their recent grad status.

While scaring up sympathy for Gen Y is often yeoman’s work, the prospect of a generation of workers who are facing job insecurity and uncertain career growth has broader social consequences that can’t be written off as the inconvenience of a coddled few. That economic mobility we prize as a hallmark of the American Dream? Well, just like the 30-year career with a single employer, its days may be over, too. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts:

“Americans raised at the top and bottom of the income ladder are likely to remain there themselves as adults. Forty-three percent of those who start in the bottom are stuck there as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle quintile. Only 4 percent of adults raised in the bottom make it all the way to the top, showing that the “rags-to-riches” story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality.”

Try not to think about this when you clock in for your next shift at the mall.

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“This is very true. The days of getting a generic liberal arts degree and turning it into a career are long gone. The ones who will succeed are those who study the “hard” fields in areas like science and engineering or those who enter more applied areas, where their college training actually does train them for a career and not just give them a generic “education.””

And what a shame that we as a nation are deciding we’re okay with a bleak future in which the only reason for anyone to go to college is to train for a very specific job. What if that job isn’t there when you graduate?

Are you kidding? Even people with hard degrees are having a damned hard time finding work these days. Computer science is no longer a safe career degree; medicine is the only growth industry remaining in this country, and that can’t last too much longer.

Its frustrating because if you want any type of job you have to go to a temp agency, and they act like they have your best interest at heart, but they give you 12-15 and hour and bill the client 22-25…Something needs to be done to mitigate this!

You can blame unions – at least in part – for this. They pushed for laws that make it harder for companies to hire freelancers. Unions didn’t like that many companies were hiring freelance truckers, for example, and used the argument that they were avoiding taxes and exploiting those freelancers, which is simply not the case most of the time.

Sure, there are always some “bad actors” out there, but most who hire freelancers do it for the flexibility of managing their workforce and the ability to keep the costs of hiring down. Salary is only part of what an employee costs. Once you factor in unemployment insurance, worker’s comp, the employer share of FICA, health insurance, liability insurance, property taxes and other facilities costs, and so on…. well, freelancers look quite attractive, especially with more and more regulations and disasters like Obamacare heaping more expense on business, it’s no wonder there’s an increase in temporary work. These agencies have become necessary middle men because of the ridiculous regulations that make it onerous for companies to hire freelancers directly.

The benefits of “Free Trade”. American capitalism is dead; destroyed by the greed of the multinational corporations aided and abetted by the United States Government. Whomever wins this next election won’t change a thing. The democrats and republicans both preach the religion of “Free Trade”, H1B visas, open borders and globalization and both parties are equally guilty in the destruction of American jobs.

The trouble really is that we’re not backed by anything real. Our economic systems need total overhaul. Both sides of the political table are claiming these wonderful ways to do this, but the problem extends far beyond one party’s solution or the other’s. The problem exists in our very infrastructure, our society, our culture. It’s the way we borrow for everything, the fact that our money isn’t backed by anything real (the Federal Reserve is a total hoax), and the way we remain fixated on this 1950s dream land when, in fact, those times are long gone.

Most of what I hear from the generation before mine is resounding chimes of 1950s ideals, paired with residual sentiments from the 80s. They all wanted to be celebrities and millionaires, and they left the system in shambles for so-called Generation Y.

Add to all of this that American has developed a nasty habit of making enemies and starting wars everywhere possible, costing us billions upon billions. The “war is good for business” sentiment is appallingly acceptable among the right, while the left does little about it. This contributes mightily to our present situation.

A lot of people out there now how these grand theories about what’s causing the present crisis. I will continue to insist that it’s not just one thing, not just two, nor three – it’s a convergence of all of those things that have been neglected for decades. We set mortgage policies in the 90s that should have been a mere stopgap measure; those policies remained. We grew to be one of the unhealthiest developed nations in the world, but did not optimize our medical systems to keep up. In hundreds, even thousands of distinct areas, we’ve been sinking under the curve, and now we’re paying for it.

Things will resume some kind of equilibrium, eventually, but one thing is for sure: on the other side of this, there’s a different America that’s nothing like the America of the 50s, of the 80s, or of any other time past.